I read this study today about how two large meals a day is better than six mini meals. If you follow Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple, this won’t really be news to you – he’s all for intermittent fasting. (Though careful, it might work differently for women.)
This last month or two I’ve been trying to incorporate breakfast into our household schedule. For years we’ve trained ourselves to NOT WANT breakfast in the mornings. Too rushed. Stomach definitely does NOT want to face food that early. Etc. etc. But it’s all a matter of conditioning.
I don’t get it right every morning. When I oversleep, the whole household goes without breakfast. When I run late, breakfast slips right off the list of priorities for the day. And that’s not going to change. If the choice is between having breakfast or catching your bus on time, there’s not even a choice, really. And that’s okay. That’s life.
So the only real question is whether I can be better prepared for breakfast in the mornings. Can I? Oh yes.
Bacon takes time to prepare – but only a few seconds to heat up in the microwave. If you make omelets Julia Child’s way, and you have the filling ready, you can sit down to eat in a flash. Who knew? I had always thought omelets were the most time consuming of all the ways to prepare eggs.
It’s all a question of preparing the night before. Is that even possible for a harebrained scattermind?
*
The memory rushes in like water.
My grandmother cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, my brother and I already in our pajamas.
I never understood how she could have the energy to clean up the kitchen after a long day. Or right after a meal she had slaved over. She was an exquisite cook. Sunday lunch at her house was always something to look forward to. And we would still sit around the table, half in a stupor after all that hearty food, and she would get up, clear the plates away and start washing up. She didn’t easily accept help, either.
But here I am, back in her kitchen, in the blueish-greenish light of the fluorescent tube overhead, the sound of the radio coming from the dining room where my grandfather was smoking his pipe and doing crossword puzzles, and grandmother preparing for tomorrow.
Water in the kettle for coffee and tea. Cups and spoons set out on the counter by the kettle.
A saucepan on the stove ready for the oats to be cooked.
Bowls and spoons on a clean tablecloth on the Formica kitchen table, a crystal jam pot set out next to the butter dish – all covered under a clean dishcloth.
And only then would she prepare for bed.
I look at that prepared table in my mind’s eye, marveling. Such a thing of beauty.
And such a safe feeling that comes with it. In my grandmother’s house, with the breakfast table set the night before, all was well with the world.
Her routines shaped the days of the week. On Mondays everything would smell lemony fresh as she scrubbed down counters and did the laundry. On Thursdays she would buff the slasto floors and the whole house would be wreathed in that fresh polish smell. There were days she oiled the wood furniture. And always, always she worked in the garden.
I was too small to have the awareness or the words then, but now that I do, I hope I can tell her one day what a beautiful and powerful memory her habits created in me, what a sense of safety … of being intact.
It is not too late to give such memories to my son, too.
Pippa's Porch 